A Cast of Killers (8 page)

"Don't hang up, Theodore," Lilah told him
cheerfully. "I'll take any phone call I can get from you. On any
pretense whatsoever. And if Auntie Lil is involved, then all the
better. It tells me that my boredom is at an end. I demand all
details immediately."

"A woman died today in a soup kitchen where
we work."

"You've been working at a soup kitchen? How
wonderful. I'm very proud of you, though I must confess it makes me
feel inadequate. I'll have to donate an extra thousand or so
tomorrow just to compensate." The good thing about Lilah was that
she never flaunted her extreme wealth and, in fact, often made fun
of it herself. "But you, Theodore, you back your convictions with
actions," she added. "I like that in a man."

"Well, I haven't been working there long," he
confessed. He checked his watch. Nine hours, to be exact. No need
to get into too many details.

"Anyway, this poor woman died today of a
heart attack in front of everyone and no one knows her real name,"
he continued. "Auntie Lil thinks if we can get a photo of her and
show it around the neighborhood, we'll be able to discover who she
was and notify her family and then she can be buried under her real
name."

"Well, she wasn't murdered, but it is a
mystery of sorts. How can I help?"

"Can you find out where they've taken the
body and get us in so we can take a photograph?"

"Only if I get to come along. Dinner and the
morgue is my idea of the ideal date."

"Are you sure you want to come?"

"I'm sure. At least about the dinner part. I
reserve judgment on the morgue. Give me the details, and I'll call
you back later tonight."

He quickly filled her in and heard the ding
of the microwave just as he finished the story. She assured him
again she'd be able to help, then hung up with a cheerful goodbye.
That left him with no one but Brenda and Eddie to engage in the
all-important rehashing of the conversation. They regarded him with
sleepy, yellow eyes and seemed infinitely bored at the
possibilities of Lilah Cheswick. They had long since given up on
their human being. In their estimation, he was really too dull for
words. Brenda yawned and daintily licked at one paw. T.S. was
dismissed.

He watched an old Barbara Stanwyck movie
while he waited and it was almost as good as having Lilah right
there. As promised, she called back several hours later and the
deed had been done. Lilah had enough money and enough breeding that
no favor asked was too great, and no amount of time too short in
which to grant it. The strings had been pulled and the doors were
being opened. The dead woman had been taken to the medical
examiner's office on the East Side of midtown. They could drop by
early tomorrow evening so long as they kept their visit
discreet.

"They'll be holding the body there for a
week, in case anyone asks about her," Lilah explained. "Then it's
Potter's Field. Do you have a camera?"

"Yes." T.S. kept his camera carefully stored
in its original box in the recreation cabinet. He liked it close at
hand so that he could film every item he purchased, for insurance
purposes. He stored the photographic evidence in a safe-deposit box
in the unlikely event a burglar was able to break through the
considerable security of his Upper East Side apartment. Few parts
of T.S. Hubbert's life went unorganized. He liked life well ordered
and well mannered.

"Good," Lilah was saying. "Then I'll pick you
up tomorrow at six sharp. I can wait outside with my driver while
you go in. I'm afraid I'd faint and make a fool of myself. How
about you? Are you sure you're ready for this?"

In truth, he already did feel a bit like
fainting. But it was at the thought of seeing Lilah again after
three months, not a dead body. He had to get a grip on himself. "It
won't be my first corpse," he pointed out in what he hoped was a
capable and slightly insouciant manner.

"True," she agreed cheerfully. "You do seem
to collect dead bodies, actually." Without waiting for his reply,
she purred a good night and left him alone with the silence of a
single man's apartment and two bored cats for company.

But there was always tomorrow.

Tomorrow commenced early
with a phone call from a determined Auntie Lil. She was going to
the morgue with them and that was that. "I've never seen the inside
of the medical examiner's office," she announced. "And I'm not
passing up the opportunity to see something new. You needn't worry
about me horning in on your little
tete-a-tete.
I shall discreetly
disappear after we take the photographs."

Discreetly disappear? Whether appearing or
disappearing, Auntie Lil was about as discreet as a stripper in a
monastery. T.S. sighed. He could argue, but what was the point? If
he said no, she'd call Lilah who would, of course, urge her to come
along for the fun of it.

No, there was no way to dissuade Auntie Lil.
They'd all just have to troop in like a club of ghoulish thrill
seekers. He'd not even be surprised if Aunt Lil brought along a
date. There was sure to be someone among her motley collection of
admirers who considered the morgue the ultimate good time.

"Now that we've settled that," she decided
for them both, "when are you coming down to the soup kitchen to
help?"

"I'll be down in a couple of hours," he
promised, not even bothering to argue. He thought of his soap
operas, but the thrills of Camilla and Tyrone seemed cheap and
artificial next to the sudden excitement of his own life. Besides,
he was not above having the little old lady actresses flutter
around him in gratitude.

Unfortunately, once he arrived at St.
Barnabas, it was obvious that the women were overcome with
theatrical grief, not gratitude. Neither Emily's death nor Auntie
Lil's chili the day before had abated anyone's appetite. The line
was as long and patient as ever. T.S. walked by, nodding at those
faces he recognized. Nearly every single one of the old actresses
was decked out in various styles of mourning wear. From far away,
they looked like small black birds scattered among the crowd. Up
close, they looked like figures you'd see on the edge of a movie
horror scene: frail and cloaked in black, about to fade slowly from
view like grim messengers from the beyond. Adelle had apparently
dragged out a leftover costume from a stint as Lady Macbeth—she
wore a long black gown uniquely inappropriate for the quite warm
late September day. But T.S. had to admire her carriage—her proud
chin never faltered—and noticed that the other soup kitchen
attendees stood at a respectable distance from her regal sorrow.
She wore a small triangular hat with a black dotted veil that swept
down over her face. Altogether, it was a flawless performance.

Adelle managed a brave smile as T.S. passed
by, and he patted her on the back in what he hoped was a consoling
manner. Then he spotted plump Eva standing to one side, defiantly
dressed in a bright red dress in a ploy to nab the Bette Davis role
in the drama. Her arms were crossed firmly across her ample bosom
and she appeared ready and raring to fight with anyone who dared
question her attire. T.S. wondered how anyone could carry a grudge
for nearly half a century. What a waste of energy to be belaboring
the past so tortuously. Especially when neither of them had
achieved success at the expense of the other. There had to be more
to it than what he knew.

He met Auntie Lil just outside the basement
door. She was poking around the garbage cans like a hobo, with a
rotten banana peel dangling from one hand. "I'm looking to see if
Emily's pocketbook was dropped after the thief rifled through it,"
she announced when she noticed his stare.

"You mean, after the thief took the money and
ran."

"No." She daintily lifted the lid off one can
and the smell of rotting onions mixed with burnt coffee grounds
wafted past. "There was no money for the thief to steal. According
to reliable sources, she abhorred cash and rarely carried it on
her. Everyone knew it. She always talked about the dangers of
carrying money in the neighborhood."

"The thief didn't know it," T.S. commented.
"Or he wouldn't have taken the pocketbook." He gently guided her
back inside before she started ripping open the sealed plastic bags
of wet debris in her search.

"Maybe the thief did know it," she said
stubbornly. "And took it anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe the pocketbook wasn't stolen for the
money."

T.S. screeched to a halt and held Auntie Lil
firmly in place. "Do not," he said very firmly and distinctly, "go
creating a mystery where none exists. We promised to find out the
woman's identity. Period. That was our deal. Our sole agreement.
Let's not get carried away." Though just warming up, he was
interrupted in his lecture by the appearance of the perpetually
hearty Father Stebbins and the lamprey-like Fran.

"Welcome back, my boy," the massive priest
boomed, thumping him on the back so enthusiastically that T.S. was
convinced he'd jarred a filling out of one of his back teeth. "I
knew you'd be the type who wouldn't get going when the going got
tough."

"Where have you been?" Fran asked Auntie Lil
rudely. "You left me all alone to skin dozens of cucumbers. I've
hardly made a dent."

"You'd better not have made a dent at all,"
Auntie Lil warned, sailing past the scowling woman with oblivious
authority. "If you bruise the flesh, you spoil the entire dish. I
can see I'll just have to do this myself."

Lunch proved to be an uneventful affair. No
one died, certainly. In fact, no one so much as choked. And much to
the chagrin of the ladies in black, few people even seemed to
notice their very public attempts at good old-fashioned grieving.
But once the meal had been served, Auntie Lil—who was still hot on
the trail of the pocketbook thief, despite T.S.'s warning—dragged
her nephew over to a table inhabited by Franklin, the enormous
black man with the soft Southern accent.

Franklin was sitting with an extremely tall,
jaundiced and probably half-demented old man. There was a peculiar
gleam in the fellow's rummy eyes and he was as gaunt and
intense-looking as a preacher gone brimstone-mad in the pulpit.
Everything about him seemed out of place. His clothes hung at odd
angles from his skinny body, his hair had been unevenly cut and
shaved in one place, plus one foot was missing a sock. Even the
white stubble that dotted his chin couldn't get its act together—it
was darkly stained in patches from unwashed dirt.

"Listen to what this gentleman just told
Franklin," Auntie Lil demanded.

"Come on," T.S. complained. "We had a deal
that you wouldn't go and—"

"Tell the man what you just told me,"
Franklin interrupted, coaxing his grimy dining partner in a gentle
voice.

"I seen the eagle lay down with the lamb,"
the old man declared in a wheezy voice. "He bent over her, I could
see he was breathing the evil. Breathed it right in her mouth, he
did. That's why she died. He'd been stalking her. I saw him on the
streets with the bright-plumed birds of prey. Those birds of a
feather, they do flock together."

T.S. stared at him for a few seconds of
uncomprehending silence, then turned to Auntie Lil skeptically.

"Tell him the rest," she asked the old man
gently.

"I saw him bending under the table while the
rest of us was watching that woman die," the old man rumbled, his
words punctuated by an occasional juicy cough. "It's bad luck to
watch death. So I was watching that man instead, 'cause I'd seen
him give her the evil eye and all. I was right wary about that eye
turning my way. I saw him reach down and pick something up off the
floor. And when they said the coppers were on their way, that man
was ready to fly the coop. He was the first one out the door."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Auntie Lil
scolded him. "He was stealing her pocketbook. He was picking the
bones of a corpse!"

The old man looked a bit taken aback by the
sudden intrusion of corpse bones, but he was not fazed by Auntie
Lil's dramatic indignation. "Weren't my business," he explained
patiently. "Weren't my business at all. But look out. There's
always trouble when the eagle gets loose among the lambs." He
returned to his stew and thoughtfully chewed on a chunk of gray
meat, staring up at them impassively with very bright eyes.

"This mysterious man was the eagle, not the
lamb? Correct?" T.S. asked drily. Much to his chagrin, Auntie Lil
brightened up at once, apparently feeling it was an excellent
question.

"He was The Eagle, all right," the old fellow
announced ominously. He tapped a fist against the biceps of his
right arm and nodded sagely. "He was The Eagle."

"The Eagle?" T.S. smiled at him grimly and
thanked the old man for his time. Gripping Auntie Lil's elbow, he
dragged her firmly away to the privacy of a kitchen corner. "Short
of treating me to a real-life cross between Dr. Doolittle and a
Charles Dickens character, what was the purpose of that little
display?" he asked crossly.

"He saw who stole the pocketbook," Auntie Lil
insisted, rubbing her elbow and glaring at him pointedly.

T.S. shook his head and ignored her silent
admonishment. Physical containment was the only way to control
Auntie Lil. "Auntie Lil," he told her, "as much as I admire your
uncompromising honesty, I don't think the police are going to be
too interested in trying to prosecute a thief who steals an empty
pocketbook from a dead woman that nobody knows." He shrugged.
"Let's just clean up, forget about the pocketbook and get ready for
what will surely be a lighthearted evening popping in at the morgue
in preparation for your latest goose chase."

His nervousness at seeing Lilah Cheswick
prompted an enthusiastically sarcastic tone. But the only trouble
with being sarcastic when talking to Auntie Lil was that she always
cheerfully agreed that it was all too, too true.